Us And Them

It’s hard to decide what to write next. I started writing this “blog” to keep people who know me informed about life in Singapore and on my travels. Most of the stories I’ve written here have been based on the truth, with some embellishments and some creative licence. What I wrote about in my last post was unembellished and written as honestly as possible. But there were several omissions that I’d like to write about. And yet I feel, as I did when I published the last post, a little uncomfortable writing about the tsunami at all. I don’t want to write about it because it didn’t really happen to us; I do want to write about it because it nearly did. The “what if” permutations are endless – what if we’d missed breakfast and had therefore been on a boat when the first wave hit? What if we’d stayed on Phi-Phi for a couple more days? I guess I feel awkward about turning it into an ongoing “story”. Our involvement was minimal, so why write about our involvement? It feels disrespectful to carry on writing about it as if we experienced it, or as some kind of therapeutic activity, but it also feels inappropriate to move on yet.

So, hesitantly, here are a couple of other things that happened and a few thoughts about some of the reporting I've seen on the tv.

On the morning the tsunami hit, Ella had relatives on the next beach, Tonsai. It took Ella and me a couple of hours to make contact with them. During that couple of hours, we barely mentioned them to each other, but we’ve since discussed the fact that they were never away from our thoughts. We just feared the worst and didn’t want to utter it. Although we didn’t know that this had hit so many coastlines, we knew that Tonsai had no sea wall, and it was next door. They, too, emerged relatively unscathed. The father was on the beach when the wave hit - he managed to cling on to a tree and was injured - while mother and son ran for the hills. They were separated for hours, but eventually found each other. We were extremely pleased to see them again at Krabi airport the next day, as we all had tickets to Bangkok.

Krabi airport was grim and quiet, despite the fact that it was full of people, who sat quietly watching the news. A first aid desk had been set up for the injured. By the time our flight left, the queue was long. We saw an Australian couple we’d met on Christmas day who had been injured, but were ok. We watched the news while we were waiting and were amazed at the increase in the death toll.

Bangkok airport was frenzied. There was a desk for people to make free international phone calls. Ella saw one man wearing just a towel with no other possessions. By the time Ella’s family members arrived on the next flight, the baggage handlers were swamped, and were just dumping bags on the tarmac for passengers to sort through.

We reached our hotel, put the news on and the death toll had risen by about 15000 since we had left Krabi.

While I was watching tsunami news coverage in Bangkok, a number of news items were in very poor taste. On CNN I watched as a “terrorism expert” suggested that the young children who survived the tsunami in places like Sri Lanka would be prime recruits for terrorist organisations. Apparently, Al Qaeda will be scouring the area for orphans who they will then train up, telling them that the West didn’t help them in their hour of need, and that they should join the fight against America and the “coalition”.

CNN also reported that, because 8 Americans had died (at that point), this was truly a world disaster.

Fox News were keen to point out America’s consistent generosity in times of tragedy and spent a good fifteen minutes whining about the lack of recognition they get for it.

I got back to Singapore to find UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on the news, saying that he was optimistic about the UN’s role in the aftermath of the tsunami, even though “the UN have got things wrong in the past”.

This is not the time to create fear about terrorism, or to score points about home nations, or to criticise organisations. I wish news networks and politicians could concentrate 100% on the job in hand rather than continuing to pursue their agendas. This is, of course, an unrealistic wish.

Ordinary people around the world seem to have responded as one to this disaster by sending money to various disaster funds. Ordinary people, touched by the tragedy, are contributing because they want to help in some way. Too many politicians and news agencies are scoring points. At a time when the world seems to be united behind a common cause, people in power are still emphasising oppositions and conflicts and are maintaining and promoting division.

Then again, as pointed out here, there are so many causes that we should be contributing to, so many reasons for governments and the media to work together and drop their petty squabbles as there have been throughout history, and yet the language of conflict and division seems to be the only language many powerful people are able to use.

They could learn a lot from ordinary people.

In a foolish moment I wondered whether this worldwide response could help to soothe some of the world’s problems. You know, in a spirit of unity, together realising that, actually, we are all one race, but we just have different opinions that aren’t worth killing for.

2527 lives were lost to global terrorism in the whole of the 1990s according to this. A total of 307 people were killed in terrorist attacks in 2003, far fewer than the 725 killed during 2002 according to this. Although of course each death is a tragedy, and many acts of terrorism are confined to the same ravaged areas, I’m surprised at how low the figures are. I trawled the internet for a while in order to ensure that I had the right figures. I couldn’t believe that the threat of terrorism was even mentioned by any news agency in the wake of a wave that slaughtered over 150,000 in a matter of seconds. Surely there should be some sense of perspective, some respect for the dead? And then I realized that I was forgetting that power corrupts, that spreading fear increases power and that the powerful respect very little except the idea of having more power.